The Kid Who Drowned

Previously: It looks like the Harbormaster is going to win the card game, but then the very old man pulls some magical shenanigans to eke out a victory based on some technicality (though I guess the whole game is nothing but technicalities). Then the very old man reveals his true identity and you could hear jaws dropping ‘round the world (a gross weird sound).

— 64 —

The Dandy Gorgon seesaws in the waves, waves which are really starting to feel spiteful at this point. Captain Nia, black hair coiling heavenward through her headdress, steeples her fingers in a poor simulation of poise and restraint. She looks the old man over. “The mayor?” she says. “Of what?”

“Fort Hook,” he says. “Maybe you’ve heard of it.”

Roger the Harbormaster tries to steady his hands by lighting his lighter, extinguishing it, lighting it, ad nauseam. “Hate to break it to you,” he says, “but the mayor of Fort Hook is a lady. Real battle-axe, too, I don’t mind saying, loves nothing more than suffocating me in red tape.”

“That ain’t the mayor,” the old man says, idly squaring off his carrick cards.

“Sign on her door says otherwise,” Sister Aether says.

“Just one in a long line of pretenders. I don’t recall her carving our city out of sand and giving it a name.”

Batya feels a confusing thrum in her chest. She tries to size up this wizened sinewy crabapple in his little fishing vest. She knew there was something off about him—I mean, everyone on board this eternally jinxed ship is off to some degree, but with him it wasn’t one of her usual snap judgments (that fellow has the stink of the midway, say, or that wench has definitely kicked someone to death), it was more like when a room feels wrong, when it’s something in the floorboards or the masonry, something undefinable and haunted.

She’s excited. She thinks: He breathed in deep, and currents spiraled out from his open hands. He listened as his laugh escaped to the surface.

“It’s the angler,” she says, looking around the table at each of her opponents. “The kid who drowned then brought all the fish around. The founder. The Mayor.”

The old man says, “Took you for the dumbest one here, maybe I was wrong.” And Bat’s never been more chuffed in her life at a backhanded compliment.

“There is no the Mayor,” Nia says. “That’s fiction. Made-up fairy rot for the tourists.”

“You’re starting to hurt my feelings,” he says, and the ship heaves upward and every bottle behind the bar smashes to the floor. The sailors let out a collective moan of heartbreak.

Aether says, “The way I heard it, the Mayor made all our waterways because one time he had a temper tantrum and shattered the coastline into fragments with his fist.”

Roger says, “I heard, back in the day, the Mayor decided the citizens of the Hook were too ugly, so he killed everyone and started over with comelier stock.”

Bat says, “I heard one time the President challenged the Mayor to a duel, and the Mayor pulled a humpback out of the sea and batted him right over the mountains.”

“All true,” the Mayor says. “Or true enough.”

Nia snorts. “So by my calculations you’re approximately, let’s see here, two hundred years old?”

“Afraid I lost count a ways back, cap’n.”

“Let’s call it a nice round two hundred. Which is why I find myself confused as to how you’re here, upright and talking, as opposed to being dust in a wooden overcoat like your contemporaries.”

“Difference between me and them,” the Mayor says, “is nothing’s managed to kill me yet.”

“Living two hundred years is not simply a matter of not getting killed.”

“I’d say that’s exactly what it is.”

Nia presses her lips together in some hideous semblance of a smile. “You’ve been gifted with unnatural and unholy life, and you’ve decided to spend it here, with us, cheating at cards?”

“I don’t cheat,” the Mayor says. “Alls I know is the sun is no longer shining in this gaming chamber, thereby negating the so-called Harbormaster’s advantage, and giving me the win.”

Roger looks like he’s about to grit his teeth into powder. “Nothing so-called about it, friend, I have a certificate and everything.”

“If anyone is the master of that harbor, friend, it is he who created it.”

Another crack of thunder. Rain hits the ship like shrapnel. Floorboards creak. Water sloshes out of the hot tub.

“Sounds like a bad one coming in,” the Mayor says. “I seen storms like this cleave a ship in two.”

Nia gets to her feet but stumbles as the Gorgon again careens in a bad direction. “I don’t care who you are, nobody cleaves my ship but me.”

The Mayor tosses his cards onto the table. “Then call the game, missy. Let’s settle up and return to the safe embrace of the Hook before the sea swallows us whole.”

Nia makes a pair of tiny fists, hits them against each other a few times, then unclenches and sits back down. “The old slab of driftwood here is the winner. The Merciful Wind is his. The Harbormaster is runner-up, gets a hundred shares of Snakehair stock. Aether gets the complimentary grog. The goon is our loser and turns the Curtain. OK? Wonderful. Dennis, kindly take us back to the docks so we can unlade all the trash we’ve gathered on this journey.”

The room erupts in perfunctory cheering, followed by some lackluster jigs. The rain settles into a gentle, soothing patter. Roger strokes his sickening mustache. Aether is mostly translucent.

Bat chews the remains of her turkey leg, feeling vaguely sullen at losing the game, but then she remembers she was never going to win and anyway now they’re heading home and, aside from some new lacerations and a bum shoulder, she’s getting out of this doomed job unscathed. Which reminds her…

She goes to pick up the Black Curtain.

“Wait,” the Mayor says, putting his gnarled fingers on her hand, an act she finds even more vexing than when he stabbed her with the boning knife. “As the victor, I get one final play.”

“Since when?” Roger moans.

“Since I invented this game, you clack-box.” And he reaches out for his Tsuris card, places his index finger on it, and rotates it ninety degrees.

“Why for that?” is all Bat can think to say.

Nia rubs her eyes. “You sure about that, Jack, or whatever your name is?”

“I am never unsure,” he says.

“All righty, well, pivoting the Tsuris once again upsets the directions. Which means players swap decks, north to south, east to west. Which means Miss Batya is our winner and the Mayor is our loser.”

Bat pumps her arms in the air. “Hot damn! Told you I was good at this game.” She grabs for the sword before she even realizes what she’s doing.

Roger shakes his head. “I have to assume there is unprecedented senility at play here.”

“Yes, what is your goddamn stratagem, old soul?” Nia says.

“I just decided I wanted this more than the sword.” The Mayor reaches into the pot and slides out the Black Curtain. He gestures at Bat, says, “Gal her age doesn’t need to know how she’s going to die. But me, I been curious about it for a very long time.”

“Thanks, Mister Mayor,” Bat says, and when her hand wraps around the hilt of the Harmattan, it feels like two golden cogwheels meshing together perfectly.

“Go ahead, then, loser,” Roger says.

The Mayor runs his finger over the single wavy line at the Curtain’s bottom, makes an horrific coughing sound, then picks up the card and gives it a good long look.

“Hm,” he says, finally.

“Well?” Nia says. “We’re dying to know.”

He flips it over to give them all a gander. Where once was nothing, there is now an illustration of a person, looking like the garish cover of a penny dreadful. The figure is posed in a kind of bare-knuckles boxing stance, fists raised. Rings on every finger of the sinister hand. Short, crudely cut hair. A dark suit with no jacket or tie, just a waistcoat. A lip-scar above a leering grin, with most of the upper row of teeth missing. And underneath is the name of this newly minted card: The Courier.

They all turn to look at Bat.

She feels their gaze upon her and stops dicking around with the sword for a second. She says, “What’s up?”

+++

This has been Chapter 64 of Chokeville, a novel by Josh Fireland.

Next up: The History of Pure Mayhem